R.E.M.’s fifteenth studio album, the twelve-song Jacknife Lee-produced Collapse Into Now, is due in early 2011. SPIN spoke with Mike Mills, who says it’ll have a more “expansive” sound than 2008’s Accelerate. Part of that expansion comes via guest spots from Eddie Vedder, Patti Smith, and, of course, Peaches. More from Mills:

With Accelerate we were trying to make a point by making the songs as short and as fast as possible … So we wanted this new one to be more expansive. We wanted to put more variety into it and not limit ourselves to any one type of song. There are some really slow, beautiful songs; there are some nice, mid-tempo ones; and then there are three or four rockers.

Mills also told SPIN that, as opposed to the more political Accelerate, Collapse is a “very personal, very human record. Not only to Michael [Stipe], but personal and human in the sense of the narrative of the songs, the protagonists of the songs.”

As far as those guests? Patti Smith sings on closer “Blue” and her regular collaborator Lenny Kaye plays guitar on another song, the one that includes Peaches. Vedder sings on a track called “It Happened Today.”